Oil field operators dedicate significant resources to improve the recovery of hydrocarbons from reservoirs while reducing recovery costs. To achieve these goals, reservoir engineers both monitor the current state of the reservoir and attempt to predict future behavior given a set of current and/or postulated conditions. Reservoir monitoring, sometimes referred to as reservoir surveillance, involves the regular collection and monitoring of measured data from within and around the wells of a reservoir. Such data may include, but is not limited to, water saturation, water and oil cuts, fluid pressure and fluid flow rates. As the data is collected, it is archived into a historical database.
The collected production data, however, mostly reflects conditions immediately around the reservoir wells. To provide a more complete picture of the state of a reservoir, simulations are executed that model the overall behavior of the entire reservoir based on the collected data, both current and historical. These simulations predict the reservoir's overall current state, producing simulated data values both near and at a distance from the wellbores. Simulated near-wellbore data can be correlated against measured near-wellbore data, and modeled parameters are adjusted as needed to reduce the error between the simulated and measured data. Once so adjusted, the simulated data, both near and at a distance from the wellbore, may be relied upon to assess the overall state of the reservoir. Such data may also be relied upon to predict the future behavior of the reservoir based upon either actual or hypothetical conditions input by an operator of the simulator. Reservoir simulations, particularly those that perform full physics numerical simulations of large reservoirs, are computationally intensive and can take hours, even days to execute.
It should be understood that the drawings and corresponding detailed description do not limit the disclosure, but on the contrary, they provide the foundation for understanding all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the scope of the appended claims.